Dan Chibnall grew up in St. Louis and enjoyed trips to Missouri state parks with his father and uncle.

His elders encouraged him to explore nature and ask questions about the plants, trees, water and rocks.

They looked at the stars on clear nights and talked about planets and solar systems. His parents gave him a small book about astronomy that he keeps on his shelf to this day.

Each trip was fun the way camping trips are supposed to be for children and families, but they also were the foundation of what became his life's passion: communicating science.

Chibnall is now a librarian at Drake University where he focuses on science, technology and math. His job is to help all students and the public better understand scientific concepts and thinking.

Chibnall's work comes at an especially important time when many complex science issues — climate change, water quality and urban sprawl — are debated in simplistic terms absent nuance or deep thinking by lawmakers and the public.

Chibnall believes this problem traces back to a willingness of American students to give up on science and math when it becomes challenging.

"There is this whole attitude that there are 'math people' and people who aren't 'math people,'" he said. "We don't do this with other areas of learning. We don't say there are 'reading people' and not 'reading people.'"

Science intimidates us at a cultural level, Chibnall said.

"A lot of people see science as a threat," he said. "When we don't learn scientific concepts and reasoning, when we are confronted with science problems, we feel ignorant or insecure. We say it's 'all academic.'"

This results in a lot of misinformation or just plain lying about science.

French fries at Big Grove Brewery and Taproom in Iowa City on April 25, 2017.(Photo: Zach Berg / Press-Citizen)

Well, for starters, everyone has a 100 percent chance of death. We're all going to die.

What the study truly said was people who eat fried potatoes two to three times a week are "associated with elevated mortality."

Association in scientific terms is not the same thing as causality.

And even the study's abstract concludes, "Additional studies in larger sample sizes should be performed to confirm if overall potato consumption is associated with higher mortality risk."

The deeper problem is that people aren't digging deeper into the scientific news they receive.

"What we try to teach in scientific communication is to approach statements with a series of basic questions," he said. "We start with, 'How do we know something?'"

In the case of the potato study, important questions to ask include how big was the sample size (4,400 people), how was the information gathered (through a food-frequency survey), who conducted the study (the Osteoarthritis Initiative, a research study conducted by the National Institutes of Health) and who participated in the study (men and women ages 45 to 79).

That last bit of information is especially important. The median age — half were older, half were younger — of participants in the study was 61 years old. The study was conducted over eight years, during which 236 of the participants died.

I have not read all of the study, only the abstract that is freely available online. But the age range of the participants leads me to another question: How many of the 236 people who died during the study were 70 or older when the 8-year study began?

The average lifespan of an American is about 79 years. If you start a study at 70 and die at 78, that's a typical lifetime in this country.

Did they have other conditions that could have contributed to their health? And what else did the people who participated in the study eat? What were their exercise levels?

I am obese, and I have arthritis in my knees and back from years of being extremely overweight. I wonder how many of the study participants were obese.

"These are all the kinds of questions people should ask whenever they see scientific data presented," Chibnall said. "Investigate the results. That's what scientists do all the time."

I believe the work Chibnall does is essential to the maintenance of our republic.

Somehow, the country that put men on the moon, eliminated scores of deadly diseases through vaccines and invented the modern computer has become frightened of the very engine of progress.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Educator Bill Nye attend a screening of "The Space Between Us" hosted by The Cinema Society at Landmark Sunshine Cinema on January 25, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)(Photo: Jamie McCarthy, Getty Images)

To further complicate matters, our celebrity culture has corrupted science communication. It seems as if only two men have been designated as spokesmen for all of the sciences: TV personality Bill Nye and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Both Nye and Tyson are passionate science communicators, but Nye is more entertainer than scientist.

Tyson is a practicing scientist in astrophysics who is probably one of the two or three smartest humans on the planet. He has the capacity and breadth of knowledge to speak eloquently on a variety of scientific topics, even those outside his specialty.

"Scientific understanding shouldn't come down to just one or two famous voices," Chibnall said. "We all need to take responsibility for understanding science and math and using that knowledge to make informed decisions in our lives."

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is the matter of curiosity. Our culture heavily favors emotive communication rather than intellectual communication.

Stories in the news media must have drama and conflict for them to be interesting to readers. Otherwise, they are about process and policy, which is dull and repetitive.

And as beautiful and important as science is to humankind, it is very much about process and repetition.

What I worry about most is that what Chibnall encourages is a deep dive by laypeople into interrogating the information they're presented rather than seeing it in false binary generalities of "good" or "bad."

I think Chibnall is wrong about something he told me.

Just as we've become a culture of people who are "math people" and "not math people," tragically, I believe we are a culture of people who read and people who don't read, and a nation of people who would rather feel than think.